Hauser 2013

Language Learning ISSN 0023-8333
Stability and Change in One Adult’s Second

Language English Negation
Eric Hauser
University of Electro-Communications and University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
This article reports on how, against a background of relatively stable patterns of second
language negation, a Japanese-speaking adult learning English made use of a negative
formula, “I don’t know,” and how, in and through interaction, analyzed it into its compo-
nent parts and began using “don’t” more productively. Making use of the micro-analytic
techniques of conversation analysis to analyze data collected over a seven-month period,
two relatively stable patterns of negation are described. This is followed by a description
of how the learner used the formula and, over time, analyzed it. This often involved
repetition and/or self-repair. Changes in how “don’t” was used included coming to use
it with the verb “like,” as well as coming to use it with “you.”
Keywords CA-SLA; formulaic speech; L2 English; L2 negation; longitudinal research
Introduction
While the use by second language (L2) learners of formulas, prefabricated
patterns (Hakuta, 1974), memorized chunks (Cancino, Rosansky, & Schumann,
1978), or multi-word expressions (Eskildsen 2009, 2011, 2012; Eskildsen &
Cadierno, 2007) has sometimes been dismissed as uninteresting in the study
of second language acquisition (SLA) (e.g., Cancino, Rosansky, & Schumann,
1978; Shapira, 1978), there has long been an interest in how learners may not
only use formulas to communicate but also, over time, analyze them into their
component parts and use these parts more productively (e.g., Bardovi-Harlig,
2002; Hakuta, 1974; Myles, Hooper, & Mitchell, 1998; Weinert, 1994). In
I would like to thank Gavin Furukawa for constructing the Supporting Information file that accom-
panies this article online and making it possible for readers of Language Learning to listen to the
data. The data, analyses, and claims are solely the responsibility of the author.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eric Hauser, University of
Electro-Communications, Building E1–614 1–5–1 Chofugaoka Chofu-shi, Tokyo 182–8585,
Japan. E-mail: [email protected]
Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498 463

C 2013 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan
DOI: 10.1111/lang.12012
Hauser Stability and Change
particular, relatively recent work in usage-based linguistic (UBL) approaches

to first language acquisition (e.g., Tomasello, 2003) and SLA (e.g., Ellis, 2003)
has given formulas a major role in the acquisition process. Eskildsen and
Cadierno (2007, cf. Eskildsen 2009, 2011, 2012), for instance, investigate how
multi-word expressions develop into limited scope patterns (Ellis, 2003) and,
possibly, more abstract constructions.
Of particular interest for this article is Eskildsen’s more recent work
(Eskildsen 2011, 2012), in which he combines a UBL approach to SLA with
conversation analysis (CA) for SLA (CA-SLA, Kasper & Wagner, 2011) to
investigate the use of formulas and their role in language development. While
I do not draw on UBL (see next section) and adopt a stance of agnosticism
with regard to mental representation of language, in this study I use CA-SLA
with longitudinal data to investigate how a limited proficiency adult learner of
English uses a negative formula, “I don’t know,” analyzes it, in and through
interaction, into its component parts, and begins to use “don’t” more produc-
tively.
The study presented in this article can therefore be considered a study of the
development of L2 negation. This topic has been an object of study for several
decades. Research which focuses, in whole or in part, on the development,
and sometimes lack of development, of L2 negation includes Hakuta (1974),
Butterworth and Hatch (1978), Cancino, Rosansky, and Schumann (1978),
Schumann (1978a, b), Shapira (1978), Hansen (1983), Meisel (1997), Bernini
(2000, 2005), Giuliano (2003), Becker (2005), Giuliano and Véronique (2005),
Dimroth (2008), and Eskildsen (2012). Some of this research has produced
models of the development of negation. Schumann and colleagues (Cancino,
Rosansky, & Schumann, 1978; Schumann, 1978a, 1978b), based on their re-
search of the acquisition of English by six Spanish speakers over a period
of ten months, proposed a set of four stages for the development of nega-
tion. They also showed how one participant did not develop beyond the first
two stages they identified, which involve the use of “no” followed by a verb
(stage one) and the use of “don’t” followed by a verb (stage two). However,
through a reanalysis of the data from this participant, Berdan (1996) has since
shown that he displayed a more subtle pattern of development, with the change
over time from stage one to stage two being somewhat obscured by variation
in negation based on linguistic context—primarily the more frequent use of
“don’t” with “I” as subject than with other subjects or no subject—and varia-
tion based on such things as whether the talk was elicited or conversational. Out
of more recent work with data collected as part of the European Science Foun-
dation project has come the idea of pre-basic, basic, and post-basic L2 varieties

(Jordens, 1997; Klein & Perdue, 1997). Negation in the basic variety involves a
negator (e.g., “no”) being placed before a non-finite verb. According to Becker
(2005), based on research of Italian speakers acquiring German, negation in the
pre-basic variety involves a negator placed before a focus element. In a study
of Tigrinya and Wú Chinese speakers acquiring L2 Italian,1 Bernini (2000)
found the use of both a negator (“no” or “non”) preceding what was being
negated and of a negator following what was being negated in the pre-basic and
basic varieties, with one difference between these two patterns being related
to information structure—the negator following what was being negated when
the negator alone was the focus element. In addition, the negator following
what was being negated developed as a means of elliptical contrast in the basic
variety. One important and general finding of the European Science Foundation
project was that not all untutored L2 learners develop beyond the basic variety
(Becker, 2005; Klein & Perdue, 1997).
Both the development and non-development of L2 negation, then, have
been thoroughly studied, at least for English and other European languages. It
may be legitimately asked why another study of the development of negation
in L2 English should be produced. What the present study contributes to an
understanding of the development of negation is, through the micro-analytic
techniques of CA, a demonstration of how a seemingly stable system of L2
negation may nevertheless show signs of change. It also provides a description
of a type of negation, in which a negator is placed after the thing it negates,
which, to the best of my knowledge, has only been described by Bernini (2000)
and, very briefly, Tarone and Swierzbin (2009).2
Exogenous Theory in CA-SLA

Within CA-SLA, there has been discussion of whether the investigation of
learning, particularly when the data are longitudinal, requires the adoption of
an exogenous learning theory, given that CA is not associated with a theory
of development or learning. The main candidate for such a theory is situated
learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), a sociocultural theory in which learn-
ing is conceptualized as movement from more peripheral to fuller participation
in a community of practice and which has been argued to be compatible with
CA-SLA (Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Kasper & Wagner, 2011; Mondada &
Pekarek-Doehler, 2004; Young, 2009). This theory has perhaps seen its great-
est utilization within CA-SLA in the work of Hellermann (2006, 2007, 2008;
Hellermann & Cole, 2009; cf. Young & Miller, 2004), who draws on concepts
465 Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498

from the theory in his analysis, describing learners of L2 English as becoming

part of communities of practice and as changing over time toward fuller partic-
ipation in interaction. Others within CA-SLA have mentioned the theory and
described it as useful (e.g., Brouwer & Wagner, 2004; Mondada & Pekarek-
Doehler, 2004; also Cekaite, 2007), but do not actually seem to draw on the
theory as part of their analysis.
Elsewhere (Hauser, 2011a), I have argued against the use of exogenous
theory in general and situated learning theory in particular within CA-SLA (cf.
Markee, 2008). The particular argument is that the key theoretical concepts
of community of practice and legitimate peripheral participation do not work
well with longitudinal interactional data. It often is difficult to determine what
community of practice a learner is becoming a member of—Hellermann (e.g.,
Hellermann & Cole, 2009) himself goes back and forth between the classroom
as a community of practice and users of English as a community of practice—
and it is unclear what criteria are used to classify participation in interaction as
more peripheral or as fuller. The general argument is that use of an exogenous
theory can lead to problems of analysis, as the data are forced to fit prede-
termined theoretical concepts that may not be appropriate. On the other hand,
CA work with longitudinal data involving children in primary socialization
(e.g., Forrester, 2008; Wootton, 1997) has demonstrated that development and
learning can be investigated through CA without recourse to exogenous theory.
Eskildsen’s more recent work (2011, 2012) provides what I take to be a
very different perspective on the use of CA with a non-CA theory, in this
case a version of UBL. One thing to note is that UBL is also not a theory
of development, though this has not prevented people working within UBL
from investigating language development (Tomasello, 2003). Eskildsen (2011,
2012), though, makes explicit arguments for, in a sense, exogenous theory.
That is, he argues for and, in my view, demonstrates the usefulness of incor-
porating a CA approach into UBL in order to investigate language learning
through interaction. However, I am not convinced of the advisability of do-
ing the reverse—bringing an exogenous theory of language (i.e., UBL) into
CA-SLA, for the same reason as the general argument against an exogenous
theory of learning. Namely, using such a theory in CA-SLA may lead to the
forcing of the data to fit predetermined theoretical concepts. In the case of
UBL, these include psycholinguistic concepts that are likely to be problematic
for CA.
While my arguments so far may sound like those of a CA purist, I would
like to add two caveats, one having to do with the possibility of (pre- and) post-
analytic connections with non-CA concerns and the other with ethnographic

contextualization of data and analysis. Kasper and Wagner (2011), drawing

on Kitzinger (2008), have argued for the possibility of making post-analytic
(as well as pre-analytic) connections between work in CA-SLA and other
work in SLA. By bracketing these possible connections, so that they do not
drive the analysis, the danger that I described above may be avoided. One
advantage of making such connections is to increase the relevance of CA-
SLA to those working in other areas of SLA. As mentioned above, the work
of Eskildsen (2012) is relevant to this study. I will therefore attempt post-
analytically to connect my findings to Eskildsen’s. The issue of ethnographic
contextualization is an issue within CA itself, rather than CA-SLA. Work on
mundane conversation often seems to eschew the provision of ethnographic
information about participants in interaction, sometimes appearing to avoid
giving any details at all about who the participants are and what, beyond the
level of adjacent turns, they are doing. As pointed out by Moerman (1988),
though, this work relies, to a certain degree, on the analysts’ and readers’
membership knowledge. When it comes to work on institutional interaction,
or on mundane conversation in cultures which are less familiar to speakers
of English, ethnographic contextualization may be necessary for an adequate
analysis and understanding of the analysis. Nevertheless, it is important to
ground the analysis in the details of interaction, so any use of information
about the participants and what they are doing needs to be shown to be relevant
(Hauser, 2011b).
Participants, Data, and Transcripts

One participant in the interaction that forms the database for this study is the
adult learner, Nori (a pseudonym), who had immigrated to Honolulu from
Tokyo with his wife and two daughters a few months prior to the start of the
data collection. He was from Mie Prefecture, Japan, where he lived until he
graduated from high school. He then moved to Nagoya, Japan, where he began
work in the restaurant business. He later moved to Tokyo, where he met and
married his wife, began raising a family, and opened two restaurants. On moving
to Honolulu, he began work as the assistant manager of a popular Japanese
restaurant. The other participant is the researcher, Eric (not a pseudonym), who
at the time the data were collected was a graduate student at the University
of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Prior to graduate school, Eric had lived in Japan for
over seven years, where he had become a relatively proficient L2 speaker of
Japanese. Nori and Eric met through Eric’s wife, who worked part-time at the
same restaurant as Nori.

Table 1 Nori recordings (2/23/01∼9/11/01)
Number Date Week Length (min.)
Nori 1 02/23 Week 1 42.5

Nori 2 03/30 Week 6 44
Nori 3 04/06 Week 7 43
Nori 4 04/20 Week 9 35
Nori 5 04/27 Week 10 40
Nori 6 05/04 Week 11 45
Nori 7 05/18 Week 13 40.5
Nori 8 05/25 Week 14 45.5
Nori 9 06/01 Week 15 47
Nori 10 06/08 Week 16 44.5
Nori 11 06/22 Week 18 45
Nori 12 07/06 Week 20 44
Nori 13 07/13 Week 21 44
Nori 14 07/20 Week 22 25 (42)
Nori 15 07/27 Week 23 40.5
Nori 16 08/03 Week 24 46.5
Nori 17 08/17 Week 26 44
Nori 18 09/04 Week 29 57
Nori 19 09/11 Week 30 44.5
Total 817.5 (834.5)
13:37.5 hours
Average 43 (44)
Note. Nori 14 contains only 25 minutes of usable recorded material.
Nori and Eric agreed to start meeting for the purpose of providing Nori,
whose proficiency in English was relatively limited, with the opportunity to
practice using English. They also agreed that these meetings would be audio-
recorded for future use by Eric for research. They planned to meet once a week,
but due to schedule conflicts, this was often not possible. As shown in Table 1,
they met a total of nineteen times across a seven-month recording period. The
average recording length was 44 minutes. However, due to a bad microphone
connection, the length of usable recorded material for the fourteenth meeting
was reduced to 25 minutes. Taking this into account, the average length of
usable recorded material was 43 minutes. The total length of usable recorded
material was 817.5 minutes, or approximately thirteen and a half hours. During
some of the meetings, part of the time was used for simple tasks prepared by
Eric in advance, such as describing pictures or telling a story based on a series

of pictures. Part of the time was also used for talking about things that Nori
had brought with him, such as a letter he had received regarding jury duty.
Time was also used for unplanned tasks, such as looking through supermarket
advertisements to find good deals for beer. The rest of the time was used for
unplanned free conversation.
Nori knew that Eric could use and understand Japanese and used both
Japanese and English during these meetings. For the most part, Eric refrained
from using Japanese. However, when the two of them met outside these meet-
ings, which was not unusual, they typically used Japanese rather than English.
The entire data corpus has been transcribed in detail following the tran-
scription conventions used in CA (Jefferson, 2004). (See Appendix S1 in the
Supporting Information online for transcription conventions.) One modifica-
tion is the use of italics for talk in Japanese, with the exception of person
and place names and Japanese words commonly used in English (e.g., tem-
pura). When Japanese appears in the transcript, a morpheme-by-morpheme
translation is given immediately below. (See Appendix S2 in the Supporting
Information online for symbols used in morpheme-by-morpheme translation,
based on Nguyen and Kasper [2009].) Except for Eric’s name, all names that
appear in the transcripts are pseudonyms. All data transcripts that are analyzed
in the present study can be found, linked to the audio files, in Appendix S3 (and
some in Appendix S4) in the Supporting Information online. They are consecu-
tively numbered there (e.g., Excerpt (S1), (S2), and so on). Each excerpt is also
notated as (N1), (N2), and so on in order to indicate the recording (first, second,
etc.) that the excerpt is taken from. A total of 50 excerpts were analyzed for this
study; in the interest of space and readability, I reproduce a subset of the same
transcripts in the present article, maintaining the consecutive numbering, while
referring readers to the Supporting Information online for the rest of transcripts
as needed.
Stable Features of Nori’s Negation

No(t)-X Negation
Two ways that Nori produces negation are relatively stable across the seven-
month period of data collection. The most common pattern is the use of
the negator “no” (or, less often, “not”) followed by what is being negated.
The negated element may be a verb, noun, or adjective, but it is not clear
whether such distinctions are meaningful for Nori. I will therefore refer to
this negation pattern as no(t)-X negation, rather than, for instance, pre-verbal

Table 2 Rough count of Nori’s use of no(t)-X negation
Recording No-X Not-X Total
N1 12 0 12
N2 32 1 33
N3 31 3 34
N4 18 0 18
N5 8 2 10
N6 10 2 12
N7 18 0 18
N8 16 4 20
N9 13 3 16
N10 16 2 18
N11 13 5 18
N12 15 3 18
N13 9 3 12
N14 17 1 18
N15 20 2 22
N16 25 2 27
N17 8 1 9
N18 16 2 18
N19 12 4 16
negation, to indicate that either “no” or “not” is prior to what is being negated.
Table 2 displays a rough count of instances of no(t)-X negation in the different
recordings. This is a rough count because it contains some ambiguous cases
and because I do not intend to conduct a quantitative analysis. The table shows
that while use of no(t)-X negation fluctuates, it does not appear to change over
time in one particular direction.
Excerpts (S1) to (S6) in the Supporting Information online show some
examples of no(t)-X negation from the first and the last recordings. Excerpt
(S1) is reproduced here.
Excerpt (S1) (N1)3
01 N: .hh close by.

02 E: yeah.
03→N: wa:kannai na. = ↑ no understand. [cluh
understand-NG IP
04 E: [so: in uh:
05 in: =

06 N: = close by. =
07 E: = in: Minami Ikebukuro? =
08 N: = yes.
In line 01 of this excerpt, Nori articulates an expression (“close by”) that Eric
has used. He then overtly states (“wakannai”) his inability to understand this
expression in (non-standard) Japanese, after which he translates the Japanese
into “no understand.” Following this, Eric does not orient to “no understand”
as problematic, but rather focuses on explaining the meaning of “close by,”
starting in line 04.
Excerpt (S2), shown only in the Supporting Information online, involves an
invitation from Nori to join a “barbeque party” (04) at Nori’s home. As part of
this, Nori produces “no busy” in line 06. Eric’s response is delayed—note the
0.7 second gap in line 08—and is marked by disfluencies—two brief pauses in
line 11, repetition of “I,” and cut-off of the first sound of “we’re.” These indicate
that there may be something problematic for Eric in Nori’s talk. Nori can be seen
to orient to what he has said as problematic for Eric as he switches to Japanese
to make the invitation in line 10. However, what is problematic for Eric does
not seem to be the expression “no busy.” Rather, the delayed response and the
disfluencies are features of a dispreferred response (Pomerantz, 1984), in this
case a rejection to an invitation. Further, this rejection is mitigated through the
use of stress on “this” of “this week,” implying a contrast with other weeks in
which it may be possible to accept the invitation. Finally, Nori’s “ah demo” in
line 12 displays his understanding of Eric’s talk as a rejection.
Excerpt (S3) (see Supporting Information online) comes from a discussion
about grappa, a distilled alcoholic beverage. In lines 01, 04, 06, and 08, Nori
makes the point that grappa is typically consumed in a bar, rather than in a
restaurant. As part of this, he states “res- restaurant no- no grappa” (06 and 08).
A few lines before this, Eric treats what Nori has said in line 01 as problematic—
there is a 0.7 second gap in line 02, after which Eric initiates repair with “haeh”
(an open-class repair initiator (Drew, 1997), more typically spelled as “huh”)
produced with rising intonation. This sort of repair initiation only indicates
that there is something problematic about the prior turn, without specifying the
source of the trouble. Nori, though, treats the trouble as being the lexical item
“bar,” which he repeats in lines 04 and 06 and spells in line 06. However, as in
the prior excerpts, Eric does not orient to the no(t)-x negation (“no grappa”) as
problematic.
In Excerpt (S4) shown below, from the final recording, Nori uses reported
speech to quote the words of another. The reported speech is marked with

person reference (“Maki chan”) followed by a verb of speech (“say”). This way
of marking reported speech is something that develops over the seven-month
recording period (Hauser, in press). Nori then uses no(t)-X negation in the
quoted speech.
Excerpt (S4) (N19)
01 N: .hh Maki chan say (.) .th ↑ Nori san no
DM PR
02→ no uh- ↑ no understand.
In Excerpt (S5) from the final recording (see Supporting Information),
Nori responds to a question with “no busy” (04). Finally, in Excerpt (S6), also
from the final recording and shown only in the Supporting Information online,
Nori responds to a question—in the form of a B-event statement (Labov &
Fanshel, 1977), a statement about the recipient which is commonly treated as a
question, at least in American English (Stivers, 2010)—with “no problem,” an
expression that Eric also used in the question. These last three excerpts provide
examples of how Nori still uses no(t)-X negation at the end of the period of
data collection.
No(t)-X negation can occur as part of a larger unit containing words or
phrases that can be understood as arguments (e.g., agents, patients) of what is
being negated. These are sometimes pre-posed and sometimes post-posed. In
Excerpt (S1), for example, “no understand” is followed by what Nori does not
understand, “cluh . . . close by.” In Excerpt (S3), “no no grappa” is preceded
by a reference to the place that Nori is talking about, “res- restaurant.” And in
Excerpt (S4), “no understand” is preceded by a reference to the person who
does not understand, “Nori san.” These arguments may also be left implicit,
but still understandable within the local interactive context. In Excerpt (S1),
for example, that Nori himself does not understand “close by” is left implicit,
while in Excerpts (S2) and (S5), who is not busy is left implicit in Nori’s talk.
No(t)-X negation is used by Nori most often to make a negative assertion, but is
also used in questions and conditionals (e.g., Excerpt (S2) “if . . . no busy”). In
addition, no(t)-X negation can be used for a negative imperative, as in Excerpt
(S7) shown in the Supporting Information online, in which Nori is telling a
story about a telephone conversation he had with an automobile mechanic.
As Nori recounts the conversation, it contains a misunderstanding on Nori’s
part about how much it would cost to repair the air conditioning in his car. Once
this has been cleared up, and the storyworld4 Nori understands accurately how
much the repair would cost, he uses no(t)-X negation in lines 09 and 10 to tell
the mechanic, in the storyworld, not to repair the air conditioning.

Table 3 Rough count of Nori’s use of X-no(t) negation
Recording X-no X-not Total
N1 0 0 0
N2 0 0 0
N3 1 0 1
N4 0 0 0
N5 3 0 3
N6 2 0 2
N7 3 0 3
N8 6 1 7
N9 0 0 0
N10 3 0 3
N11 0 0 0
N12 3 0 3
N13 2 0 2
N14 0 0 0
N15 0 0 0
N16 2 0 2
N17 1 0 1
N18 1 0 1
N19 0 0 0
X-no(t) Negation
Based on Nori’s use of no(t)-X negation, he could be described, in the Cancino,
Rosansky, and Schumann (1978) model, as remaining at the first stage of
negation across the seven-month data collection period. Alternatively, across
these seven months, his negation could be described as the kind of negation
found in the basic variety (Jordens, 1997; Klein & Perdue, 1997) or, perhaps,
on the border between pre-basic and basic (Becker, 2005; Bernini, 2000).
Interestingly, though, Nori also sometimes produces what I will call X-no(t)
negation, in which the negator (except in one instance, “no”) follows what
it negates. A rough count of his use of this kind of negation is shown in
Table 3.
Though much less frequent than his use of no(t)-X negation, Nori uses
X-no(t) negation fairly consistently as part of a particular practice of correc-
tion, as can be seen in Excerpts (S8) and (S9), both shown in the Supporting
Information online only. In lines 02 to 07 of Excerpt (S8), Nori and Eric estab-
lish that Nori went with his daughters to the beach in Waikiki “this morning”

(05), or as Nori puts it, “today morning” (02–03). As this meeting between Nori
and Eric is also in the morning, this leads to some confusion. In line 12, Eric
asks if his daughters are “in Waikiki now,” to which Nori responds in lines 13
and 14 that they are. Eric treats this as in need of further explanation—leaving
one’s elementary-school-aged daughters on their own in Waikiki can be consid-
ered an accountable matter—and asks in line 15 about whether Nori’s daughters
are with his wife. Nori rejects this (16), but then adds the word “home” (17).
Eric then changes his understanding of the situation Nori is describing as he
asks whether he has taken his “daughters back home” (19). Nori confirms this
(20) and Eric indexes that he has reached a new understanding with “oh okay”
(21). Following a 0.8 second gap (22), Nori orients to his own earlier use of
“today” as the source of the confusion. He does recognition of what has caused
the confusion by saying “ah today” with rising intonation in line 23. He then
produces X-no(t) negation, saying “today no” in line 25, followed by multiple
“no” tokens and a replacement for “today,” that is, “yesterday.” (Note that while
there is no pause between “today no” and “no = no = no,” there is a shift in
pitch, which makes “today no” and “no = no = no” hearable as separate units.)
This use of “today no” is a clear example of how Nori usually uses X-no(t)
negation, as part of a practice of correction in which something which is incor-
rect is first rejected with X-no(t) negation and then replaced with something
else.
In the previous excerpt, the thing that was corrected was produced by Nori
himself. There are also cases of Nori using X-no(t) negation to correct some-
thing produced by Eric. In Excerpt (S9) (see Supporting Information), Nori
is describing the contents of “one package” of beer purchased at a warehouse
store. Specifically, he is describing how many cans of beer the package contains.
In lines 04 and 05, Nori states that one package contains “thirteen” cans. Eric
then initiates repair on the number by repeating it with rising intonation (07), af-
ter which Nori says “thirty.” Eric then initiates repair a second time by offering
a different candidate number, “twenty-four” (09). Nori rejects this candidate
with X-no(t) negation in line 10, after which Eric suggests another candidate
number, “thirty-six” (11). Nori does not respond to this second candidate, but
rather goes on to provide the correct number again in line 13, “thirty.” Finally,
in line 16, he starts what could be a translation of this number into Japanese,
cuts this off and reformulates the number in English (“three zero”), and then
translates it into Japanese. As in the previous excerpt, X-no(t) negation is used
as part of a correction in which something is rejected with the negation and
then replaced which something else. In this excerpt, though, the thing that is
rejected has been produced in Eric’s talk. (The one instance with “not,” found

in the eighth recording, involves the same practice, with the rejected item being
something which Eric has produced.)
There are a few cases though, such as in Excerpt (S10), in which what is
being rejected with X-no(t) negation is not something produced in prior talk.
That is, these cases do not involve correction. In Excerpt (S10), in the Support-
ing Information online, Nori is describing a method of language learning that
he presents as popular. One feature of this method, as he describes it, is that
when you hear an unknown word in your new language (e.g., “business” (01)),
you should not look it up in a bilingual dictionary (e.g., “English Japanese
dictionary” (04 and 05)), though you may look it up in a monolingual dictio-
nary (e.g., “English English dictionary” (07 and 08, 10 and 11)). While he uses
X-no(t) negation to reject “English Japanese dictionary,” this is not a correction
of anything in prior talk, as this was not used in prior talk by either Nori or
Eric. However, the X-no(t) negation is part of a contrast, a contrast between a
kind of dictionary that is to be rejected and a different kind of dictionary that
may be used.
Instances of X-no(t) negation that are part of a correction outnumber those
in which there is a contrast but no correction. What instances of this latter type
indicate, though, is that there may be a more abstract way of understanding
how Nori uses X-no(t) negation. That is, it is used to construct a contrast
between something which is rejected and a different thing which is accepted.
Doing a correction of something which has been introduced into prior talk is
a propitious environment for constructing such a contrast, so Nori sometimes
finds this type of negation useful when he does correction. There may also be
an element of development involved, though the evidence for this is limited.
The first time Nori uses X-no(t) negation when it is not part of a correction is
in the seventh recording. Before this, there are six recorded instances of this
type of negation used as part of a correction, while after this instance there
continue to be recorded cases of this type of negation used for correction,
including one case in the seventh recording. A possibility is that Nori first uses
X-no(t) negation solely as a resource for doing correction of something in prior
talk. His use of this kind of negation for correction always involves a contrast.
Later, he comes to expand his use of this kind of negation to situations where
a contrast is constructed, but there is no correction. It may be, then, that over
time Nori develops a more abstract use of X-no(t) negation as a resource—from
using it solely for correction to using it for constructing a contrast which is not
necessarily, though it may be, part of a correction.
Interestingly, Tarone and Swierzbin (2009) briefly discuss the use of “no”
following what is being negated in the L2 English of two Spanish speakers.

They attribute this to transfer, stating that it is a “form of negation that occurs
in Spanish” (p. 116). However, the three examples that they have of this each
involve some sort of contrast. While transfer from Spanish should perhaps
not be ruled out, it should be noted that a Japanese speaker has now also
been observed to use this sort of negation for contrast in L2 English. Finally,
as discussed above, Bernini (2000) also found this sort of negation used for
contrast in L2 Italian.
Development in Nori’s Negation

With the exception of possible development of X-no(t) negation with a con-
trastive function of the kind just noted in the previous section, the description of
Nori’s two main resources for negation given in the previous section presents a
relatively stable system. Nori would seem not to have developed much, if at all,
in how he produces negation over the seven-month period of data collection.
However, a closer look at the data reveals something interesting, namely, that
Nori uses what appears to be a fixed formula—“I don’t know”—which, over
time, he analyzes into its component parts, as he begins to use “don’t” with a few
other verbs, in particular with “like,” and, eventually, to use “don’t” with “you”
as well as “I.” In this section, I will first describe how Nori uses “I don’t know.”
I will then examine how he analyzes this formula into its component parts
and begins to use “don’t” more productively. For comparison, Appendix S4
in the online Supporting Information contains an examination of how another
possible formula is not made much use of and not analyzed into its component
parts.
How Nori Uses “I don’t know”

Nori’s first recorded use of “I don’t know” is in the second recording, in which
he uses it a total of eight times. Across the seven months of data collec-
tion, he uses it at least once in each recording except the first, fifth, seventh,
eighth, and fourteenth. As shown in Excerpts (S11) to (S13), found in Ap-
pendix S3 in the Supporting Information online, Nori commonly uses “I don’t
know” together with the (nonstandard) Japanese expression wakannai (I don’t
know/understand) or something similar.
In Excerpt (S11) (see Appendix S3 online), Eric asks Nori a question about
his daughters’ English ability (01 and 02). After some repair work related
to who Eric is asking about in lines 05 to 09, Nori first displays that he is
considering the question (10), through nonlexical sounds, an inbreath, and the
Japanese “doo daroo” (How is it?), and then claims an inability to answer

with the Japanese “wakannai” (11). When this gets no response—note the 1.1
second gap in line 12—he uses “I don’t know” in line 13. Eric then accepts this
response in line 14.
There are also cases in which “I don’t know” is used before “wakannai.”
In Excerpt (S12) in the Supporting Information, Eric has been describing a
particular bar in Tokyo. In line 06, Nori responds to this by claiming lack of
knowledge, first with “I don’t know” and then with the Japanese “wakannai,”
after which he asks Eric a question, in Japanese, about his experience with this
bar (08).
The prior two excerpts were both from the second recording, but Nori
continues using “I don’t know” with “wakannai” in later recordings as well, as
can be seen in Excerpt (S13), from the eighteenth recording (see Appendix S3
of the Supporting Information online). In this excerpt, Nori and Eric have been
discussing golf. Nori has made some self-deprecatory comments about his golf
ability, one of which, in Japanese, occurs in line 01. Eric asks a question, in the
form of a negative B-event statement, in line 02, which Nori responds to with
a partial repeat, but also employing no(t)-X negation (03). Nori then claims
a lack of knowledge and/or understanding in line 07, first with the Japanese
“wakannai” and then with “I don’t know.” Each of these excerpts demonstrates
that, for Nori, both “I don’t know” and “wakannai” are useful expressions,
which may be used together, for claiming lack of knowledge or understanding.
As can be seen in Excerpts (S14) and (S15), Nori also uses “I don’t know”
in response to Eric’s use of “I don’t know.”
Excerpt (S14) (N3)
01 N: Los Angeles Dodgers:? ↓ National League?

02 (0.2)
03 E: I don’ know.
04 (0.2)
05→N: I(h) d(h)on’ [know? [.hh okay. .hh ↓ uh =
06 E: [heh heh [heh heh
07 N: = ↑ National League, American League,
08 E: yeah,
In Excerpt (S14) reproduced here, Nori has been talking about a Japanese
baseball player in the Major Leagues. In line 01, he asks a question about
whether a particular baseball team is in the “National League.” Eric’s response
to this question is to claim lack of knowledge with “I don’t know” (03), after
which Nori repeats “I don’t know” while laughing. In this sequential context,

the repetition and the laughter index Nori’s surprise at Eric not knowing the
answer to his question.
Repetition of “I don’t know” continues in later recordings. In Excerpt
(S15), found only in the Supporting Information online, Nori and Eric have been
discussing plans for a barbeque at Nori’s residence. In lines 01 and 03, Nori asks
a question about the date, to which Eric responds with “oh I don’t know” (04).
Nori then repeats “I don’t know” (05), which elicits, first, a confirmation from
Eric (06), and next, after the gap in line 07, further explanation of why he cannot
answer the question (08 and 10). In addition, then, to using “I don’t know” to
claim lack of knowledge or understanding, Nori also sometimes repeats Eric’s
use of “I don’t know” where it accomplishes such things as indexing surprise,
eliciting confirmation of lack of knowledge, or, more generally, receipting what
Eric has said.
For Nori, “I don’t know” is a versatile resource for the making of meaning.
For example, in Excerpt (S16) of Appendix S3 online, in its sequential context,
it is hearable as meaning “I don’t like.” In this excerpt, Nori and Eric are
discussing the clothes worn by a man in a picture. In line 04, Nori says “I like
shirt” followed by “no scarf.” After Eric reformulates this as “you don’t like
the scarf” (06), Nori again says “no scarf” (05). In this context, both uses of
“no scarf” are understandable as indicating that he does not like the scarf. Nori
then says, in line 09, following some disfluency, “I don’t know . . . style.” One
way of understanding this is that it indicates that Nori does not like the style of
clothing worn by the man.
In Excerpt (S17), Nori uses “I don’t know” as an expression of affect
(see Supporting Information online). In this excerpt, Nori and Eric have been
working together to retell a story depicted in a series of pictures. In line 01,
Eric asks a question about the feelings of the main character in the story. Nori’s
answer, “I don’t know,” could be taken to mean that Nori himself does not know
how the character feels. However, Eric takes his “I don’t know” as indexing
that the character is “confused” (04) or “surprised” (06).
In Excerpt (S18), also in Appendix S3, Nori uses “I don’t know” in the
construction of a dispreferred response. During this excerpt, Nori and Eric are
looking at information on discounted items at different supermarkets. At the
start of the excerpt, they are talking about information on a kind of beer. After
Nori indicates that he likes this kind of beer (01) and Eric agrees (03), Eric
suggests that Nori purchase this beer “for Sunday” (05), a reference to shared
plans. Said quickly, and with the laughter that follows (07), this is hearable as
a less-than-serious suggestion. Nori neither accepts nor rejects the suggestion.
Rather, after a 0.3 second gap, he says “I don’t know” (09) and refers to the

amount of beer. One way of hearing this is as indexing his unwillingness to

accept the suggestion, without actually rejecting it.
“I don’t know” can be used with other arguments (e.g., “I don’t know style”).
These may be postposed, as in Excerpt (S16) analyzed above, or preposed, as in
Excerpt (S19), also in the online Appendix S3. In this latter excerpt, Nori and
Eric are discussing classified advertisements for used scooters. One scooter is
listed as manufactured by Akita. In line 01, Nori uses “I don’t know” to claim
lack of knowledge of this manufacturer.5
Overall, for Nori, “I don’t know” is a useful resource that allows him to
participate in the interaction with Eric in English. As will be shown in the
next section, this formula is also a useful resource for learning more targetlike
means of negation.
Using “don’t” With Other Verbs

The first recorded time that Nori uses “don’t” with a verb other than “know” is
in the third recording. In line 06 of Excerpt (S20) (shown only in the Supporting
Information), Nori repeats, word-for-word, Eric’s “I don’t remember” (05).
Nori’s second recorded use of “don’t” with a verb other than “know” also
occurs in the third recording, about a minute or so later, as shown in Excerpt
(S21), which is reproduced below.
Excerpt (S21) (N3)
01 E: but you don’ like them?

02 N: you li- do not uh I ↓ ‘es ↑ yes ↓ yes
03 n:o- ↑ no like.
04 E: you don’ like them?
05→N: don’ like. .hh
06 E: m
Lines 02 and 03 contain self-initiated self-repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, &

Sacks, 1977) in which Nori uses “do not,” perhaps showing an accurate analysis
by Nori of Eric’s “don’t” in line 01. The outcome of the repair is “no like” (03),
an instance of no(t)-X negation. Eric then other-initiates repair in line 04 with
a question, “you don’t like them,” a B-event statement with rising intonation,
which Nori partially repeats as “don’t like” (05). These first two recorded uses of
“don’t” with a verb other than “know” involve repetition of something Eric has
said. The second instance also involves repair work with the use of “don’t like”
as the outcome of the repair work and as a replacement for no(t)-X negation.
In addition to several instances of “I don’t know,” the fourth recording also
contains five cases of Nori using, or attempting to use, “don’t” or a variant of

“don’t” without “know,” as can be seen in Excerpts (S22) to (S26). Excerpt

(S22) is shown below.
Excerpt (S22) (N4)
01 E: ↑ uh: ↓ don’ do that.
02→N: I(h) do(h)n’t tha(h)t.
03 E: hn ((laugh token))
04 (0.9) ((N sips coffee))
05 E: ◦ m:◦
06 E: were you very busy last night?
07 (1.6)
08 N: m↓ m- (0.8) ↑ no. no bu↑ sy. .hh (.) uhm
09 ↑ this month, ↑ no busy.
Prior to this excerpt, Nori has been jokingly reporting a non-serious threat
that he had earlier made to Eric’s wife. In line 01, Eric responds by telling
Nori not to do what he has threatened. In line 02, Nori says, interspersed with
laughter, “I don’t that.” While this can be considered a partial repetition of
Eric’s “don’t do that” (01), it is notable that Nori adds “I” and also clearly
articulates the final stop of “don’t,” which Eric does not. Lines 01 to 03 come
at the end of a sequence, after which Nori sips coffee (04) and Eric starts a new
sequence with a question (06). Nori uses no(t)-X negation in his answer (08 and
09). Though it is nontargetlike, the falling intonation and lack of orientation of
either participant to Nori as having further talk to contribute in this sequence
index the completeness of Nori’s turn in line 02.
During Excerpt (S23) in Appendix S3, Nori and Eric are telling a story
based on a series of pictures. In response to a question with the verb “see” (01),
Nori repeats part of the question and then answers it with no(t)-X negation
(02). Eric reformulates this in line 03 and again in line 05. In these two re-
formulations, Eric says “don’t” carefully and clearly, as he articulates the final
stop of “don’t,” which he usually does not do. In line 06, Nori responds to the
second reformulation by starting to repeat “they don’t,” but self-initiates repair
by cutting off “don’t.” The outcome of the repair is no(t)-X negation.
In Excerpt (S24) (see Appendix S3 online), in overlap with Eric, Nori
apparently attempts to say “she’s don’t” in lines 05 to 06, but with “don’t” cut
off. This may be an attempt to repeat Eric’s “she doesn’t” (line 04), but this
is difficult to be sure of with the change of vowel and the change of “she” to
“she’s.”
In Excerpt (S25) in Appendix S3, Nori appears to attempt a repeat of
“didn’t” in line 06, before switching attention to a lexical item by saying

“manbiki” (shoplifting) with rising intonation. Eric then provides a translation

of this (08) and the talk following this excerpt focuses on this translation.
In Excerpt (S26) (online only), Nori apparently repeats Eric’s use of “don’t
(03), though one thing to note is that, though he says “don’t” quietly, he articu-
lates the final stop, while Eric does not. In the fourth recording, then, there are
five instances of Nori attempting to use “don’t” or a variant of “don’t.” Each
of these possibly involves repetition of something Eric has said and, except for
Excerpt (S22) (“I don’t that”), is incomplete.
The fifth recording contains no instances of “I don’t know,” but does contain
Nori’s third recorded use of “don’t” with a verb other than “know.” In lines 01,
05, and 08 of Excerpt (S27) in the online Supporting Information, Eric says
“don’t worry.” In line 06, Nori initiates repair by attempting to repeat “about
that” with rising intonation. After Eric completes the repair (08) by orienting
instead to “don’t worry,” with stress on the word “don’t,” Nori repeats it twice
in line 09, interspersed with laughter. The laughter and the rising intonation
on the second repetition index surprise, indicating that Nori now understands
at least the “don’t worry” part of Eric’s “don’t worry about that.” Eric orients
to Nori having this degree of understanding, as he then adds “about that” (10)
following the first repetition.
In the sixth recording, Nori uses “I don’t know,” but does not attempt to use
“don’t” with a verb other than “know.” In the seventh recording, Nori does not
use “I don’t know,” but does attempt to produce a variant of “don’t.” In Excerpt
(S28) shown in the online Appendix S3, Nori’s response in line 03 to Eric’s “I
didn’t see that” (02) indicates that he has misunderstood what Eric has said. Eric
then initiates repair in third position (Schegloff, 1992) by repeating “I didn’t see
that.” In overlap with this, Nori quietly says “dint” with rising intonation (05),
apparently an attempt to repeat Eric’s “didn’t.” Coming in overlap with Eric’s
second use of “didn’t,” rather than following it, this attempted repeat indicates
that Nori did, in fact, pick up on Eric’s first use of “didn’t.” Nori responds with a
change-of-state token (Heritage, 1984), which can be understood as a claim to
now understand what Eric has said, uses the Japanese word for “but” (“demo”),
and then states on which channel news of what he is talking about could have
been seen. By telling Eric where he could have seen this news, Nori displays
that he now understands what Eric has said. While Nori seemed to attempt to
repeat “didn’t” once in the fourth recording (Excerpt (S25) briefly mentioned
previously), this is the first clear evidence that he understands the meaning of
“didn’t,” though he does not use it productively himself.
In the eighth recording, Nori again does not use “I don’t know,” but he does
use “don’t” with “like,” as can be seen in Excerpts (S29) and (S30). Importantly,

his use of “don’t” with “like” is becoming more productive. In lines 01, 03, and
05 of Excerpt (S29), shown online, Nori asks Eric whether he likes “coconut”
or “macadamia nut” flavored coffee. After the word “like” (05), Nori provides
a candidate answer, “no,” articulated with rising intonation. Before Eric begins
his answer, he then says “don’t.” In the local context, “don’t” is hearable as a
replacement for “no” as a candidate answer for the question about whether Eric
likes these two flavors of coffee. A short time later, Nori again uses “don’t”
with “like,” this time with more success.
Excerpt (S30) (N8)
01 N: oh. hh (0.2) ◦ uh◦ .h demo (0.2) f s-
but
02 ↑ Starbucks espresso?
03 (0.2)
04 E: uh huh,
05→N: ◦ uh-◦ (0.4) I d’ like. m: [: [nuh
06 E: [you [don’t like? =
07→N: = you don’ you don’ like. ↑ I- I don’t like.
08 E: oh. [why not.
09 N: [◦ amari◦ ↑ amari oishikunai.
not-very not-very delicious-NG
In Excerpt (S30), reproduced here, Nori and Eric are still talking about
coffee. In line 05, Nori says “I d’ like,” which is tentatively taken by Eric to
mean “I don’t like,” as Eric initiates repair in line 06 by saying “you don’t like,”
with rising intonation and stress on “don’t.” With the stress on “don’t,” as well
as the articulated final stop, Eric specifies the trouble that he is initiating repair
on as the negation of “like.” In line 07, Nori repeats “you don’t” and “you don’t
like” before changing the pronoun to “I,” which he cuts off, and then saying “I
don’t like.” (See the next subsection on pronoun reversal errors resulting from
repetition.) The outcome of the repair work, initiated by Eric and continued by
Nori before being brought to completion, is the targetlike “I don’t like.”
In the ninth recording, Nori twice uses “I don’t know,” but there are no
other uses of “don’t.” In the tenth recording, in addition to four instances of “I
don’t know,” there is one instance of “I don’t like.” There is some self-initiated
repair work in line 01 of Excerpt (S31) (see Appendix S3 online), as Nori cuts
off at the end of “anmari” and produces a non-lexical “uh,” but this seems more
related to choice of language than how to form negation, as the outcome of the
repair involves a switch back to English. Following the repair work, Nori says
“I don’t like” with a micropause between “don’t” and “like.”

The eleventh recording contains one instance of “I don’t know,” but no in-
stances of “don’t” without “know.” The twelfth recording contains one instance
of “don’t” with “like,” in addition to two instances of “I don’t know.” This is
shown in Excerpt (S32) below.
Excerpt (S32) (N12)
01 E: do you:- do you like camping?
02 (0.8) (( N swallows coffee))
03 N: hhhh hkkhh ((cough)) no- ↑ I like (0.6) uh (.)
04 ca- camping ga s’ki janai na. uh- (.) outdoor
SB like CP-NG IP
05 [s’ki.
like
06 E: [you don’ like camping?
07 N: yeah = yeah ◦ camp◦ .h I like outdoor: (.) sports.
08 E: yeah
09→N: noah no: no like ↑ I- I don’t like ↓ uh ↑ camping.
10 .h [huh .h huh
11 E: [oh
In response to Eric’s question in line 01 about camping, Nori answers, in
a mixture of Japanese and English, that he does not like “camping,” but likes
“outdoor” (04 and 05). Before he finishes saying that he likes “outdoor,” though,
Eric reformulates what Nori has said in English as “you don’t like camping”
(06). With rising intonation, and in this sequential location, it is hearable as
a candidate understanding of what Nori has said. In response, in line 07,
Nori confirms the candidate understanding and then says “camp” quietly. He
then produces a brief inbreath and reformulates in English the second part of
what he said in lines 03 and 04, as “I like outdoor sports.” Then, in line 09,
he reformulates the first part of this. As he does this, he starts with no(t)-X
negation, saying “no no like,” but then, resetting his pitch, he says “I,” which he
cuts off, and then says “I don’t like uh camping.” The resetting of pitch and the
cut-off “I” indicate the performance of self-initiated repair, with the outcome
of the repair work being the replacement of “no no like” with “I don’t like.”
That he engages in repair work to replace no(t)-X negation with an expression
containing “don’t” makes visible his orientation to “I don’t like” being a more
appropriate way to say what he wants to say than “no no like.”
The thirteenth recording contains one instance of “I don’t know,” one
instance of “I don’t like,” one attempt to use “don’t” with something other than
either “know” or “like” (Excerpt (S33)), and one use of a variant of “don’t”

(Excerpt (S34)). Both excerpts are shown in the Supporting Information online
only but are elaborated upon here. At the start of Excerpt (S33), Nori engages
in self-initiated self-repair, the outcome of which, having said “I don’t” in line
01, is “I have don’t” in line 02. There follows more self-initiated self-repair, the
outcome of which is “coffee mill.” In line 04, Eric reformulates this as “you
don’t have a coffee grinder.” While this involves a change of “have don’t” to
“don’t have,” it is not designed as a correction of Nori’s ordering of “have” and
“don’t.” Rather, with the stress on “grinder,” it is designed as a correction of
“coffee mill.” Nori’s response in line 05 shows his orientation to what Eric has
said as a correction of lexical choice, as he confirms Eric’s reformulation and
then repeats “grinder.”
In line 05 of Excerpt (S34), Eric initiates repair on what Nori has said in line
03 with a candidate understanding. Nori responds by rejecting the candidate
understanding, using no(t)-X negation (06). Eric then produces a change-of-
state token and reformulates what Nori has said as “the tempura doesn’t taste
good” (07). The stress placed on “doesn’t” in Eric’s reformulation marks the
difference between his current understanding and his understanding two lines
earlier. However, it also seems to draw Nori’s attention to the word “doesn’t,”
as Nori repeats it twice in line 09, each time with stress on “doesn’t.”
The fourteenth recording contains no uses of “don’t.” The fifteenth record-
ing contains five instances of “I don’t know” and one instance of “don’t” with
a new verb, shown in Excerpt (S35) below.
Excerpt (S35) (N15)
01 E: is the miso sauce different?
02 N: m:. (.) .h ((sniff)) ↑ demo (.) (mau) (.) ↓ oh-
but
03 ↑ good taste
04 (0.2)
05 E: yeah,
06→N: mah- ah- ↓ eh- (1.2) ↑ I (.) I don’ (0.4) like
07→ ↑ dislike.
08 E: you don’ [dislike
09 N: [you- you- ↓ n (joh) ↑ yes yes. ↑ I
10 don’ ◦ dislike.◦
Prior to this excerpt, Nori has described a dish served at his restaurant as
not as good as the same dish in the city of Nagoya, Japan. In line 03, though,
he says that the dish served at his restaurant has “good taste.” Then, in line 06,
following a fair amount of disfluency, including a 1.2 second pause, he says

“I don’t . . . like dislike,” with stress on the first syllable of “dislike.” Eric
then reformulates this as “you don’t dislike,” with the same stress pattern (08),
which Nori confirms (09) before again saying “I don’t dislike” (09 and 10).
Nori’s use of “dislike” with “don’t” not only extends his use of “don’t” to a
new verb, it also shows his sensitivity to the construction of meaning within
the contingencies of sequentially ordered interaction. He has already said that
the dish in question is not as good as the original dish in Nagoya, which can
be heard as implying that he does not like the dish served at his restaurant, but
he has also said, in line 03, that the dish has “good taste.” By using “I don’t
dislike” rather than, for example, “I like,” he is able to take a stance towards
the dish which is appropriate for a dish that tastes good, but is not as good as it
could be.
In the sixteenth recording, there is one instance of “I don’t like,” as well as
four instances of “I don’t know.”
Excerpt (S36) (N16)
01 E: have you tried the TOEFL?
02 (0.2)
03 N: ↑no↓:.
04 E: no? [you don’t need to. [hh huh huh
05 N: [n.
06 N: [m:
07 N: shiken is [teh- no no good. = test s’ki jana(h) =
test like CP-NG
08 E: [don’t
09→N: = .h [I(h) d(h)on’ l(h)ike t(h)est. .h
10 E: [yeah
11 E: there’s no- there’s no reason too.
12 N: yeah.
13 E: ↑an’ it’s uh it’s not a very good test.
There are three instances of negation in Excerpt (S36), shown here. In line
07, Nori produces “no no good,” meaning that he is not good at tests, then
negation in Japanese, as “test suki janai” (I don’t like tests), and finally “I don’t
like test.” In addition to the negation in Japanese, there is both no(t)-X negation
and negation using “don’t.”
In the seventeenth recording, in addition to three instances of “I don’t
know,” there is another use of “don’t” with “like,” this time used to ask a
question (see discussion of Excerpt (S45) below), and a use of a variant of
“don’t” with “see,” shown in Excerpt (S37) in the Appendix S3 online. In

this excerpt, Nori twice uses no(t)-X negation, “no looking” (01) and “no no
looking” (05). In line 07, Eric reformulates this as “you didn’t see,” with stress
on the word “didn’t.” After confirming this (08), Nori uses “I did not see” (10).
In overlap, Eric responds to Nori’s confirmation in line 11 with “neither did
I.” When Nori initiates repair on this (14), Eric reformulates it as “I didn’t
see it either” (15), again with stress on “didn’t.” After a fairly long gap, Nori
initiates repair again with the Japanese “nani” and by repeating “I didn’t see”
(19) with rising intonation. It is not really clear to what extent Nori understands
the use of “didn’t,” but he at least recognizes a connection between “did not”
and “didn’t.”
In the eighteenth recording, there are three instances of “I don’t know” and
one attempt to use “don’t” with a new verb, shown in Excerpt (S38) online. In
lines 06 and 07, Nori uses no(t)-X negation, saying “no no change wait person.”
In response to Eric’s repair initiation (09), Nori uses the Japanese for “change,”
and then “changing wait person ga . . . I don’t” (14 and 15), before once more
using no(t)-X negation (“no no change wait person”) in line 19.
In the final, nineteenth recording, shown as Excerpt (S39) in the Appendix
S3 online, Nori uses “I don’t know” four times and “don’t” with a new verb
one time. As with Nori’s use of “don’t” with new verbs in previous excerpts,
this one also involves repetition. In lines 05 and 06 of Excerpt (S39), Eric says
“I don’t leave a tip,” which Nori partially repeats as “don’t tip” (08).
To summarize, from the third recording to the nineteenth recording, while
Nori continues to use “I don’t know,” he also begins to use “don’t” with other
verbs, namely, “remember,” “like,” “worry,” “have,” “dislike,” “see” (with
“didn’t”), “change,” and “tip.” This often involves repair work, either self-
initiated or other-initiated, and/or repetition of something Eric has said. There
is a great deal of variability in how targetlike Nori’s use of “don’t” with these
other verbs is, ranging from utterances such as “I have don’t” and “changing
wait person ga . . . I don’t” to “I don’t dislike.” With one particular verb, “like,”
Nori’s negation shifts from no(t)-X negation to negation with “don’t.” While
for the other verbs, his use of “don’t” may simply be a one-time occurrence,
“don’t like” becomes for Nori a commonly used expression which he comes
to use in situations that do not involve either repair or repetition. There is also
some evidence that Nori comes to recognize that there are variants of “don’t”—
namely “doesn’t” and “didn’t”—but he only uses these in contexts of repetition.
There is also some evidence that he comes to recognize that “didn’t” is used for
the past and that it can be divided into “did” and “not.” Throughout, of course, he
continues to use no(t)-X negation and, much less frequently, X-no(t) negation.

From “I don’t” to “You don’t”

As discussed above, many instances of Nori’s use of “I don’t know” are word-
for-word repetitions of Eric’s use of “I don’t know.” He sometimes also repeats
“you don’t know.” This results in many cases of pronoun reversal error (Dale
& Crain-Thoreson, 1993). There is an interesting asymmetry, though, between
these reversal errors with “I” and with “you,” in that Nori comes to change
“you” to “I” in partial repeats of “you don’t know” much earlier than he comes
to change “I” to “you.”
First, though, as can be seen in Excerpt (S40), it is possible for word-for-
word repetition of “I don’t know” not to result in a reversal error. In this excerpt,
shown only online in Appendix S3, Nori and Eric are constructing a story based
on a series of pictures. In lines 01, 02, and 07, Eric formulates (Heritage &
Watson, 1979) part of the story as they have constructed it so far. This includes
stating something the main character says, that is, “I don’t know” (07). In
line 08, Nori confirms that this is what the main character says with “I don’t
know yes.” The first three words are a word-for-word repeat of the last three
words of Eric’s prior turn, with no change of pronoun, but as talk attributed
to another, in this case not changing the pronoun from “I” to “you” does not
result in a reversal error. There is one other case in the data, which is from the
same recording and also involves talk related to this story, in which repetition
of “I don’t know” is attributed talk and, therefore, does not involve a reversal
error.
In the sixth recording, shown as Excerpt (S41) in the online Appendix
S3, Nori does a word-for-word repeat of “you don’t know” which leads to
a reversal error. However, he immediately corrects it. In line 01, Nori says
in Japanese “wakannai,” which Eric reformulates as “you don’t know” (02)
with rising intonation. The rising intonation makes it hearable as a candidate
reformulation calling for a confirmation. Nori provides the confirmation in
line 03 by repeating, word-for-word, “you don’t know,” and thus making a
pronoun reversal error. However, immediately, as indexed by the equal sign in
the transcript, Nori corrects this to “I don’t know.” This is not in response to
anything Eric has said, as Eric has merely responded to Nori’s “you don’t know”
with a quiet “oh” (04). Nori then takes the correction a step further in line 06,
using Japanese negation (“janai”) to reject “you don’t know” and then repeating
“I don’t know.”6 The fact that the only lexical difference between “you don’t
know” and “I don’t know” is the pronoun, together with the contrastive stress on
“you” and “I,” indicate that it is the choice of pronoun that Nori is commenting
on in line 06.

A similar reversal error occurs in the eighth recording, shown in Excerpt

(S30) (shown in an earlier section in this article), when Nori repeats “you
don’t like.” As in Excerpt (S41), he immediately corrects this to “I don’t like.”
In the twelfth recording, as shown in Excerpt (S32) reproduced earlier, in
response to “you don’t like camping,” a question formatted as a negative B-
event statement, Nori says, after some intervening talk, “I don’t like camping.”
Something similar happens in the fifteenth recording, which is Excerpt (S42) in
the Supporting Information online. In line 05 of that excerpt, Eric reformulates
Nori’s “wakannai” as “you don’t know,” said with rising intonation. Though
his response in line 06 includes some repair work, this is not related to pronoun
choice and Nori answers the question without making a reversal error.
Finally, the nineteenth recording (see Excerpt (S43) online) also includes an
instance of Nori responding to “you don’t know” with “I don’t know.” However,
as shown, it also contains a case of Nori making a pronoun reversal error in
response to “you don’t know.” Similar to some of the prior excerpts, Eric in line
06 of Excerpt (S43) reformulates “wakaranai” as “you don’t know,” said with
rising intonation. However, unlike in the prior excerpts, Nori does a word-for-
word repeat, thus producing a reversal error which he does not try to correct.
Overall, then, except for one case in the final recording, from the sixth
recording, Nori displays knowledge of the appropriateness of changing “you”
to “I” when responding to something Eric has said which contains “you don’t.”
When he makes a reversal error, he corrects it himself, with no prompting or
assistance from Eric. In three cases in later recordings, he does not make a
reversal error at all. (Prior to the sixth recording, there are no cases of Nori
responding to “you don’t” with either “you don’t” or “I don’t.”)
However, when it comes to word-for-word repeats of “I don’t know,” or “I
don’t” with some other verb, pronoun reversal errors are much more common.
From the second to the seventeenth recording, Nori does a word-for-word rep-
etition without changing “I” to “you,” when such change would be appropriate,
and thus produces a pronoun reversal error, a total of thirteen times. Excerpts
(S14) and (S15), analyzed earlier, provide examples of this. There are zero cases
in which Nori responds to “I don’t know,” or “I don’t” with some other verb,
by saying “you don’t know” (or some other verb). It is not until the nineteenth
recording, in Excerpt (S44) in the Supporting Information online, that Nori,
for the one and only recorded time, corrects a reversal error by appropriately
changing “I” to “you.”
In line 01 of that excerpt, Eric responds to a question (not shown) asked by
Nori related to professional American football with “I don’t know.” Eric then
uses this again in line 04. Nori does a word-for-word repeat of this in line 05,

producing a reversal error, but after a micropause corrects this to “you don’t
know,” said with rising intonation.
There is, then, an asymmetry between reversal errors which involve not
changing “you” to “I” and those which involve not changing “I” to “you.” For
the former, the only uncorrected reversal error occurs in the final recording and
in three cases where a word-for-word repeat would have resulted in a reversal
error, Nori does a partial repeat with “you” changed to “I.” For the latter,
word-for-word repeats resulting in reversal errors are much more common.
Nori never does a partial repeat in which “I” is changed to “you” and a reversal
error is completely avoided, though he does correct this sort of reversal error
one time in the final recording.7
A possible reason for this is that, for Nori, there is a strong connection
between using “don’t” and using the pronoun “I.” As mentioned in the Intro-
duction, Berdan (1996) found that “don’t” followed by verb, rather than “no”
followed by a verb, was more likely when it was preceded by “I” as the subject.
It may, therefore, be interesting to look at when and how other pronouns come
to be used with “don’t.” The first time this occurs is in the fourth recording, as
shown in Excerpt (S23) discussed earlier. Here, Nori responds to Eric’s “they
don’t notice” (05) with “they don’t” (06), but cuts off the word “don’t” and
replaces it with no(t)-X negation (“no looking”). The next time this occurs is
in the sixth recording, when, as shown in Excerpt (S41) (shown online, and
discussed earlier), Nori makes a pronoun reversal error as he repeats “you don’t
know” which he immediately corrects to “I don’t know.” In the eighth recording,
as shown in Excerpt (S29) (shown online and discussed earlier), Nori uses both
“you” and “don’t” in a question, “do you . . . like no? don’t” (5). Also in the
eighth recording, Nori uses “you don’t” in a word-for-word repeat that results
in a reversal error, but then corrects this to “I don’t,” as shown in Excerpt (S30),
reproduced and discussed earlier in this article. As shown in Table 4, up through
the eighth recording, Nori uses “don’t” with a pronoun other than “I” a total of
four times. Three of these involve repetition, with one repetition (“they don’t”)
being repaired and replaced with no(t)-X negation and the other two resulting
in reversal errors which Nori then corrects. Only one, in the eighth recording,
does not involve repetition, and in this one “you” and “don’t” are separated.
The first time that Nori uses a pronoun other than “I” with “don’t”
which does not involve repetition, and in which the pronoun and “don’t” are
contiguous, is in the seventeenth recording, which is shown in the Appendix
S3 online only and is analyzed in what follows (see Excerpt (S45)).
In lines 02 and 03, Nori asks Eric a question, in the form of a negative
B-event statement, which includes “you don’t like.” Nori’s turn in these two

Table 4 Use of “don’t” with pronouns other than “I”
Recording Repetition Self-correction Talk
N4 Yes No they don- no looking

N6 Yes Yes you don’t know. I don’t know
N8 No No do you . . . like no? don’t
N8 Yes Yes you don’t you don’t like. I- I don’t like.
N17 No No you- you don’t like marine sports?
N19 Yes No you don’t know
N19 Yes Yes I don’t know? you don’t know?
lines starts with a non-lexical sound, followed by a brief inbreath, and then a
cut-off sound and a 0.3 second pause. The “you” in the question is not produced
fluently, with the first articulation of “you” including a sound stretch and being
cut off. However, the question itself—“you don’t like . . . marine sports?”—is
a targetlike B-event statement used to ask a question, the most common way of
asking a yes/no question in American English (Stivers, 2010). This excerpt thus
shows Nori for the first recorded time breaking the strong connection between
“I” and “don’t” in an environment that does not involve repetition. Finally, as
shown in Excerpts (S43) and (S44) above, in the nineteenth recording, Nori
produces his only uncorrected pronoun reversal error in which “you” is not
changed to “I” as he repeats “you don’t know,” as well as his only corrected
reversal error in which “I” is not changed to “you” as he repeats “I don’t know”
and then corrects this to “you don’t know.”
To summarize, through much of the seven-month recording period, there is
for Nori a strong connection between the pronoun “I” and “don’t.” However,
towards the end of the recording period, this connection is weakened and Nori
begins to use “you” with “don’t” as well. It is interesting to note, as a way of
contrast, that Nori did not make much use of another formula, “I can’t speak
English,” as he apparently did not analyze it into its component parts. The data
and corresponding analysis demonstrating the nonuse and nondevelopment of
“I can’t speak English” by Nori over the seven-month period of data collection
can be found in Appendix S4 of the Supporting Information online.
Discussion
“I don’t know” is a versatile resource for speakers of English that is used to

accomplish a variety of actions (Hutchby, 2007; Tsui, 1991). It is therefore

unsurprising that Nori also found it a useful resource and makes use of it
from early on. Other longitudinal research on L2 learners of English has also
found this to be a commonly used formula (e.g., Butterworth & Hatch, 1978;
Eskildsen, 2012). Indeed, as suggested in the analysis of “can’t” in Appendix
S4 of the Supporting Information online, it is possible that Nori found “I don’t
know” to be so useful that it limited the usefulness of alternatives. In addition
to being a useful resource for Nori as he tried to communicate in English, “I
don’t know” was also a useful resource for learning a more targetlike pattern
of negation. Similar results are reported in Eskildsen (2012).
Overall, Nori’s system of negation was quite stable over the seven-month
period of data collection. He mostly used no(t)-X negation and, much less
frequently, X-no(t) negation. The range of uses for no(t)-X negation was fairly
wide, while use of X-no(t) negation was much more restricted. While there is
the interesting possibility that Nori’s use of the latter type of negation underwent
some development, the evidence for this is thin. As for the former, it was used
throughout the period of data collection and was very productive. At least as
far as negation is concerned, Nori did not seem to be developing. Rather, and
similar to what Schumann and colleagues argued for the case of one of their
participants (Cancino, Rosansky, & Schumann, 1978; Schumann, 1978a, b),
Nori appeared to have stopped at the first stage of the development of negation
in their model. In the model developed by researchers working on data collected
through the European Science Foundation project, Nori’s negation apparently
stopped, at least for the period of data collection, at the level of the basic
variety (Klein & Perdue, 1997), or perhaps even at the level of the pre-basic
variety (Bernini, 2000; Becker, 2005). As also shown by Berdan (1996), though,
appearances can be deceptive. The relative stability and productiveness of no(t)-
X negation can obscure the fact that, over the period of data collection, Nori used
a particular negative formula, analyzed it into its component parts, and slowly
began expanding his use of one of those parts. The way that Nori produced
negation, then, was both stable and changing.
Much of this change depended on opportunities to repeat something said
by Eric. Eric’s use of “don’t” with pronouns other than “I” and with verbs other
than “know” provided particular affordances, in the sense used by Eskildsen
(2012), within the interaction for Nori to also use, through repetition, “don’t”
with pronouns other than “I” and verbs other than “know.” In addition, the
organization of interaction provides opportunities to perform repair, with there
being a structurally-based preference for self-initiation of repair—in the ab-
sence of an interruption to initiate repair on another’s talk, opportunities to
self-repair occur earlier than opportunities for others to initiate repair—and a

similar structurally-based preference for self-repair following other-initiation of

repair (Schegloff et al., 1977). Self-repair, either initiated by self or other, is of-
ten involved in Nori’s expansion of his use of “don’t.” It is through self-initiated
and other-initiated self-repair that he comes to use, in specific instances, “don’t”
with verbs other than “know” as an alternative to no(t)-X negation. The orga-
nization of interaction, then, can be seen to provide another sort of affordance
which allows Nori to expand his use of “don’t.”
As discussed in the Introduction, while some researchers have dismissed
formulas as uninteresting, others have argued, for at least four decades now
(e.g., Hakuta, 1974; Eskildsen, 2012), that they play an important, perhaps
even central, role in L2 development. This does not mean, though, that any
particular formula (e.g., “I don’t know” or “I can’t speak English”) will be
a resource for development for all learners. Whether any particular formula
will be such a resource for any particular learner is contingent on whether that
learner uses the formula and, in the process of using it, analyzes it into its
component parts. The fact that Nori did not make greater use of “I can’t speak
English” (see Appendix S4 in the Supporting Information online) does not
mean that some other learner will not find this a useful expression and come to
analyze it into its component parts. Conversely, the fact that Nori made fairly
frequent use of “I don’t know” does not mean that other learners will also find
this expression as useful. That said, “I don’t know” does appear to be a formula
used by many L2 learners of English. Not only does Eskildsen (2012) present
results similar to those presented in this article, but since the 1970s, researchers
have mentioned the use of “I don’t know” as a formula (Butterworth & Hatch,
1978; Shapira, 1978).
Though I have not framed my analysis within UBL, the present results
are compatible with a UBL perspective on language acquisition which involves
development from the use of formulas to limited scope patterns (and possibly to
more abstract constructions). In particular, they are compatible with Eskildsen
(2012, p. 365) when he argues that:
negation does not seem to be learned as a rule-governed syntactic
phenomenon to be deployed across diverse linguistic patterns in a
broad-sweeping manner, but seems to emerge in different patterns in
different ways at different points in time along, rather than across,
constructional lines.
Indeed, the results of the present CA-SLA approach show how the devel-
opment of negation, for this learner at this particular time, relies on the use
of a particular formula and opportunities within interaction—provided through

repetition and self-repair—to analyze that formula and use part of it more
productively. The result is that this learner comes to add “I don’t like,” “you
don’t like,” and “you don’t know” to the linguistic resources that he can draw
on to express himself in his L2. I would argue that this provides theoretically
agnostic, independent support, from the outside, for the UBL view of language
acquisition, as described by Tomasello (2003), Ellis (2003), and Eskildsen
(2009, 2011, 2012; Eskildsen & Cadierno, 2007).
Conclusion
As mentioned in the Introduction, with so much research having been conducted
on the development of L2 negation, especially for English and other major
European languages, it is legitimate to ask what justifies another study of the
development of negation in L2 English. My answer to such a question, should
anyone actually ask it, is that this study illustrates how a detailed, fine-grained
analysis of data, such as can be accomplished through the analytic techniques of
CA and CA-SLA, when applied to longitudinal data, can draw our attention to
small areas of development which may often be obscured against a background
of stability. There is now a small but growing body of work in CA-SLA that
makes use of longitudinal data. Most of this work involves looking at such
things as changes in how learners start a classroom task (Hellermann, 2007),
in how they initiate topics and respond to topic proffers (Nguyen, 2011), and in
how they orient to another’s telling as a recipient (Ishida, 2011). While this work
is valuable and demonstrates how CA-SLA can broaden our understanding of
what it means to learn an L2, I would like to suggest that longitudinal work in
CA-SLA should also look at the development of linguistic resources, such as
particular vocabulary items (Hauser, 2013; Markee, 2008) or grammar (e.g.,
negation), and by doing so, help us to reconsider what we think we already
know about the process(es) of SLA.
Final revised version accepted 29 December 2012
Notes
1 One participant in Bernini (2000) was a German speaker. However, this
participant’s variety of Italian was already beyond the basic variety.
2 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to Tarone and
Swierzbin (2009) and to Lourdes Ortega for drawing my attention to Bernini (2000).
3 For reasons of space, many transcripts are only available in Appendix S3 in the
online Supporting Information. Most transcripts, whether shown in the text or only

online, are also linked to audio files online. The only exceptions to this are excerpts
(S2), (S4), and (S38), which do not include audio files in order to protect the
anonymity of participants or participants’ relations.
4 In this excerpt, Nori is using reported speech (cf., Hauser, in press). I draw the term
storyworld from Buttny (1998), who defines it as “the context offered by the
reporting speaker to situate the reported speech” (p. 48).
5 An anonymous reviewer asked whether this could be similar to X-no(t) negation.
While this is a possibility, it is treated by Eric as a claim of lack of knowledge in
line 02, after which Nori states, in a mixture of English and Japanese, that it is not a
“Japanese maker” (line 04) and then wonders aloud, mostly in Japanese, about
where this manufacturer is located (line 05).
6 Note also the similarity to X-no(t) negation.
7 According to Tomasello (2003), for children acquiring English as a first language,
the majority make few if any pronoun reversal errors. When such errors are made,
“the most frequent error is substituting you for I/me . . . , which occurs about four
times more often than substituting I/me for you” (p. 202). At least as regards such
errors as a result of repetition, Nori does the reverse.
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Supporting Information
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this
article at the publisher’s website:
Appendix S1. Transcription Conventions.

Appendix S2. Symbols Used in Morpheme-by-Morpheme Glosses.
Appendix S3. Excerpts (S1) to (S45) with audio files.
Appendix S4. “I can’t speak English”—Nonuse and Nondevelopment.

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Language Learning ISSN 0023-8333

Stability and Change in One Adult’s Second

Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498 463

particular, relatively recent work in usage-based linguistic (UBL) approaches

Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498 464

Exogenous Theory in CA-SLA

465 Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498

from the theory in his analysis, describing learners of L2 English as becoming

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contextualization of data and analysis. Kasper and Wagner (2011), drawing

Participants, Data, and Transcripts

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Table 1 Nori recordings (2/23/01∼9/11/01)

Number Date Week Length (min.)

Nori 1 02/23 Week 1 42.5

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Stable Features of Nori’s Negation

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Table 2 Rough count of Nori’s use of no(t)-X negation

Recording No-X Not-X Total

01 N: .hh close by.

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Table 3 Rough count of Nori’s use of X-no(t) negation

Recording X-no X-not Total

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Development in Nori’s Negation

How Nori Uses “I don’t know”

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01 N: Los Angeles Dodgers:? ↓ National League?

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amount of beer. One way of hearing this is as indexing his unwillingness to

Using “don’t” With Other Verbs

01 E: but you don’ like them?

Lines 02 and 03 contain self-initiated self-repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, &

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“don’t” without “know,” as can be seen in Excerpts (S22) to (S26). Excerpt

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“manbiki” (shoplifting) with rising intonation. Eric then provides a translation

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483 Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498

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485 Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498

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From “I don’t” to “You don’t”

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A similar reversal error occurs in the eighth recording, shown in Excerpt

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Table 4 Use of “don’t” with pronouns other than “I”

Recording Repetition Self-correction Talk

N4 Yes No they don- no looking

“I don’t know” is a versatile resource for speakers of English that is used to

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491 Language Learning 63:3, September 2013, pp. 463–498